Politics

Cruz accuses Republican leadership of ‘trickery’ over debt ceiling

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
Font Size:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is calling the Republican leadership out in Congress for the “trickery” of privately wanting the debt ceiling to increase while publicly voting against it in a “show vote” to appease constituents.

Referring to last week’s votes on raising the debt ceiling – which Cruz opposed – the senator said on CNN: “I think last week, actually, is a perfect illustration of everything that’s wrong with Washington.”

Cruz attempted to block the bill, which forced several fellow Republicans, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, to side with Democrats to cut off debate and allow the debt ceiling to come up for a final vote.

After that, all Republicans voted against the debt ceiling in the final vote, which Cruz derided as a “show vote.” As Democrats control the Senate, the bill passed.

“What Republican leadership said is we want this to pass, but if every senator affirmatively consents to doing it on 51 votes, then we can all cast a vote no and we can go home to our constituents and say we opposed it,” Cruz said in an interview with CNN chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash in Texas.

“And listen, that sort of show vote, that sort of trickery to the constituents is why Congress has a 13 percent approval rating,” Cruz said.

Follow Alex on Twitter and Like him on Facebook